General Introduction
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Investment as an Analytical Paradigm for Innovation
Definition and Conceptual Scope
The analysis of innovation and entrepreneurship phenomena requires a unified conceptual framework capable of capturing their multiple dimensions. The concept of investment provides precisely such an analytical framework. In its fundamental economic meaning, investment is defined as the renunciation of present consumption in order to increase future productive capacity (Keynes, 1936). This definition implies three constitutive elements: an initial sacrifice of resources, a future-oriented temporality, and uncertainty regarding expected outcomes.
This conceptualization finds particular resonance in the field of innovation. Schumpeter (1942), in his foundational work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, characterizes the entrepreneur as the economic agent who assumes the risk of allocating present resources to create new productive combinations. Entrepreneurial innovation thus constitutes, by its very essence, an act of investment—a mobilization of financial, human, and organizational capital whose outcome remains structurally uncertain.
Knight (1921) established a crucial analytical distinction between risk, which is probabilistic and therefore insurable, and radical uncertainty, which is non-probabilistic and characterizes genuinely innovative situations. This Knightian uncertainty underlies the specificity of innovative investment and justifies the entrepreneur’s remuneration.
Course Architecture
This course is organized around three complementary modules, each addressing a specific dimension of the relationship between investment and innovation.
The first module examines the mechanisms through which firms build their capital and create value. The analysis distinguishes between tangible and intangible forms of capital and introduces the fundamental distinction, theorized by Teece (1986), between value creation and value capture. This distinction illuminates the strategies through which firms attempt to appropriate the benefits of their innovations.
The second module approaches innovation as a sociotechnical process. Contrary to the linear representations that prevailed in early innovation models, contemporary approaches emphasize the interactive, distributed, and socially embedded nature of innovative processes. Innovation involves a multiplicity of actors—inventors, entrepreneurs, users, financiers, public institutions—whose interactions shape technological trajectories.
The third module addresses the dynamics of organizational transformation induced by innovation. It notably covers the issue of intangible assets and the social and environmental sustainability challenges that firms face.
Each module is divided into units integrating both video and textual course content, which are complementary. Also, at the end of each unit, a documentary dossier and questions (in the form of quizzes and fill-in-the-blank texts) are provided. You are recommended to produce an independent summary for each unit aimed at verifying for yourself that the unit’s learning objectives are understood. Course certification will be validated upon completion of the final assessment only.